In Search of a Solution to the Problem of Psychiatric Drug Toxicity

Dr. Ratan Singh discusses the use of Isopathic doses of allopathic drugs to reduce drug side effects

Abstract: A common hurdle in the treatment of the mentally ill is the intolerable side effects of allopathic psychiatric drugs (APD) because of their toxicity. Patients for this reason take the APD irregularly or altogether stop them and drop out of treatment or they try alternative therapists including homeopathic physicians. The homeopath finds himself faced with two problems, that is, not just to alleviate the symptoms of the original illness but also to alleviate the iatrogenic symptoms caused by APD. In fact patients often come with the request to help them stop the APD. Often the case is that patients have already struggled to stop the APD but have had to return to APD intake because of drug withdrawal reactions. In this article, a solution to this problem is proposed in the form of serial and ultrahigh dilutions of APD. Such a dilution can be used without stopping the APD or with slow tapering of the APD. Some evidence of beneficial effect of APD dilution so familiar among homeopathic circles is cited as example of relief to the patient who otherwise finds himself a prisoner of APD.

Mental health practitioners today face the problem of toxic side effects of allopathic psychiatric drugs (APD). Many a patient suddenly drops out and stops taking these drugs or uses them irregularly and searches for alternate therapies. Orthomolecular psychiatrists, homeopathic physicians and clinical psychologists often face this problem because often their patients are on allopathic psychiatric drugs (APD) that hinder the effect of these alternate therapies including the homeopathic medicines. Prousky [1] has emphatically brought to focus this predicament of alternate therapists. He says “…the orthomolecular approach will continue to have limited efficacy in the treatment of schizophrenia because of the brain-disabling and toxic effects that psychiatric medications possess”.

Allopathic drug companies attempt to address this problem of drug toxicity by altering the molecular structure of the drug. But at the end of the day the drug molecule is always heterotoxic. Therefore the patient’s immune system mounts an attack on allopathic molecules. In any case the trials of APD is at best for six months, but the patient is often advised to take these drugs for her life and even during pregnancy and advanced age. Therefore the solution to this quagmire has to lie outside the present day practice of allopathic psychiatry.

This paper attempts to bring to light a solution to this urgent problem. The proposed solution can be adopted with or without simultaneous use of APD and with or without micronutrients and diet therapy or any other alternate therapy. An advantage of this proposed solution is that, like all homeopathic medicines, it is very cheap and easily affordable even by poor populations. What I am proposing can be called Serial Dilution Protocol (SDP) and Ultra High Dilution Protocol (UHDP) as used in homeopathy. But unlike homeopathy, where the medicine is prescribed on the basis of similarity of symptoms between the illness and the homeopathic drug, here I propose the use of serial dilution, first used by Samuel Hahnemann for medicinal purpose, of the very psychiatric drug that is causing the toxic side effects. This I propose can be an additional therapy in the kit of a homeopath. In fact such a procedure has been already used mainly by European homeopaths [2] under the name Isotherapy. The late homeopath Dr. Tinus Smits [2] has used Isotherapy to successfully treat many children suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) Most of these children were normal at birth but regressed after undergoing the allopathic vaccinations.

I have found the serial dilution protocol (SDP) effective even when used as a standalone therapy in the case of cold turkey cessation of ongoing APD. I will briefly describe both serial dilution protocol (SDP) and ultra high dilution protocol (UHDP) and cite supporting research. Both these have been found effective. So at present I do not prefer one over the other. My present position is to start with SDP and let the clinical feedback be the guide for the decision to later on use UHDP.

The SDP is as follows. A Starter or Mother Solution is prepared of the offending substance that in our case is an allopathic psychiatric drug (APD). The Starter is a saturated solution but liquid enough to be pulled up into an injection syringe that has its needle removed. Just 1cc of the Starter is pulled up in the syringe and poured into 4cc distilled water or any relevant diluents such as 100 proof ethyl alcohol available with homeopathic suppliers. This solution is labeled “1/5”. Again 1cc of 1/5 dilution is pulled up and added to 4cc distilled water or alcohol and that is called 1/25 dilution. This series of dilution by a factor of 5 can continue to whatever limit. The therapeutic testing starts with about 3 or 4 drops of 1/5 dilution dribbled under the patient’s tongue or anywhere in his mouth, preferably retained in his mouth for about 3 minutes. Often children with psychiatric symptoms are not initially cooperative. In such a case the drops can be dropped anywhere in his mouth or applied on a soft part of his skin. Also it’s alright if the child swallows the drops rather than retaining them in mouth for 3 minutes. The next weaker dose of dilution is given after 10 minutes or 30 minute intervals. The drops of serially weaker –in homeopathy called the higher potency–dilutions are poured in his mouth at 10 to 30 minute intervals and signs of symptom improvement or worsening noted. These intervals are changeable according to the situation such that I have used 10-minute intervals, day-wise intervals (the dilution is given two days in a week) or monthly intervals when for example hormone dilution is used as therapy for premenstrual syndrome [3]. The guiding principle is that what gives exacerbation at lower dilution, e.g., 1/5, will give relief at a weaker level of dilution e.g., 1/125. The goal is to find the exact dilution that relieves or reduces the main symptom. Such a dilution of the offending drug is called End Point Titration (EPT). I have also used the dilution once a day for two days, for example Monday and Thursday. Each week I would ask the patient how he felt during the week. If there was relief then I might continue the EPT dilution as treatment and test the other drug’s dilution starting with 1/5. It may be necessary to run two drugs the same week but on different days. For example I am continuing the EPT of APD Valium/Diazepam on Mondays and Thursdays; EPT of Imipramine Hydrochloride on Tuesdays and Fridays. We don’t need to buy these allopathic drugs. The patient already has them. Incidentally, for my ongoing patient I have found the EPT of Valium at 1/125 but for Imipramine Hydrochloride I have not yet found the EPT even at 1/10,000. I am giving Valium 1/125 on Mondays and Thursdays with excellent results. I give Imipramine 1/10,000 dilution on Tuesdays and Fridays but have had no success yet. These data will be reported separately.

Mandell and Scanlon [4] cite successful treatment of alcoholism with -0.1cc wine diluted in 1000cc of water. Mandell and Scanlon [4] also cite cancer cases of the late Dr. Lee who successfully treated cancerous tumours. Dr. Lee is quoted to prepare serial dilutions from surgical specimen of the patient’s own tumour of late stage inoperable cancer and successfully eradicate cancer using the end point titration dose also called the neutralizing dose of the dilution.

The UHDP followers, almost all of whom are homeopaths, use dilutions much beyond the Avogadro’s number. It is in their work [5] that I came across an article that is directly relevant to the problem of toxic side effects of psychiatric drugs, although the said article was on mice and the disease and medicine was not psychiatric. The researchers [5] introduced trypanosome cruzi (T. Cruzi) in mice. The mice were then divided into two experimental and two control groups. Dependent measures were lab parasitological parameters and clinical parameters such as weight gain etc. One experimental group received the standard allopathic drug ponderal benznidazole (PB). The second experimental group received PB and ultrahigh dilution of PB (PB + UPB). The results were significantly in favour of PB + UPB than the PB alone or the control groups. It was a well designed research. Also the side effects were less in the PB + UPB group compared to PB group. Body temperature was raised in PB + UPB group indicating activation of the immune system.

The SDP users are a small group and nearly all are allopaths. By contrast, almost all UHDP users are homeopaths. The difference between SDP and UHDP is that by definition UHDP is ultrahigh dilution, far beyond the Avogadro’s molecular number that is 10 to the power 23. At that an ultra-high dilution allopaths believe that all traces of the drug or substance in the solvent is lost. The main criticism against SDP and UHDP advanced by mainstream allopathic medicine is that when there is no trace of drug left in the solvent, how can that solution be of any medicinal value? But some advanced research refutes this criticism. It has been discovered that the memory of the solute stays in the solvent, for example water, as quantum energy vibration. Be as it may, the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum of the solute has been detected in the ultra-high diluted solution [6].

Discussion

The idea here is that the treating homeopath let the psychiatric drug continue at its prescribed dose preferably under psychiatric supervision but himself also gives an UHD of the same drug in parallel. The critics say that at the UHD level, there is nothing of the original substance left that would exert any effect. It’s beyond the scope of this paper to go into the intricacies of the counter to this criticism but briefly I should mention two important researches. In one research Benveniste [7] the scientist, famed for his discovery of the platelet formation factor, published an article revealing that he could dissolve an antigen in water way beyond Avogadro’s number, extract the specific electromagnetic signature of the antigen and digitize it and send it as a file attachment with an e-mail from France to a laboratory in Chicago where the signal was passed in water to make new UHD. This new UHD was tested in the laboratory in Chicago on isolated heart muscle of pig. The muscle gave the expected reaction to this reconstituted solution in the Chicago laboratory. There was a flood of reactions to this claim. The Nature editor himself went to Benveniste’s laboratory with his team to first hand observe the process. There were claims and counter claims. Results of several replications were mutually contradictory.

But another group of scientists [8], not involved in the Benveniste experiment and not using e-mail transmission, published another research in which the researchers showed that histamine does exert its expected effect on basophiles even in histamine’s highly diluted form. In conclusion the UHD research involving mice infected with Trypanosoma cruzi mentioned above gives us hope that we can turn around the current scenario in psychiatry for the benefit of our patients suffering from the allopathic psychiatric drug side effects.

A legitimate pharmaco-kinetic position can be held that statistically there is very little chance that a molecule of a medicine will get in contact with a target organ in the body, but there is very high probability that the medicine in the form of electro-magnetic vibrations or quantum resonance such as obtained in ultrahigh dilutions always used by homeopaths can affect any organ without causing toxic side effects. It is hoped that good sense will prevail in allopathy and its drug companies such that all the allopathic medicines will be made like the homeopathic medicines for the benefit of patients.

Acknowledgement: I must acknowledge Dr. Doris Rapp in USA, board certified paediatrician but who practices SDP, for tirelessly answering my queries for over two years and my colleague and friend, Dr. G. S. Hehr in India, although an allopathic psychiatrist, but practices UHDP and homeopathy whom other psychiatrists maliciously defame by labeling as demented. These two unusual doctors tirelessly taught me by e-mails and phone calls answering my endless questions.

About the author

Ratan Singh

Dr. Ratan Singh - M.A. (Psychol), Postgraduate Diploma in Medical & Social Psychology, Ph.D.; Certified Behavior Therapist, Consultant in Nutritional and Neurobehavioral Psychology, Jaipur Hospital, India. Dr. Singh has a diploma in Nutrition and Health Education and is a Life Member, Nutrion Society India and International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine. He was formerly Assoc. Prof. in Clinical Psychology in BHU Institute of Medical Science and later on Assoc. Prof. in University Science Malaysia Medical School and Hospital, Visiting Prof. in American University in Bulgaria and has published papers on behavior therapy, hypnosis, biofeedback, meditation and orthomolecular medicine in Canadian, Australian and US journals. He is author of "Nutrition & Supplements in Major Mental Illnesses". Visit Dr. Singh at www.RegainMentalHealth.com/